Jaime Casallas Mora

FINCA EL PRADO STORY

On the western skirt of the eastern cordillera of Colombia, there is a small- town booming with called Gigante in the region of Huila. Travelling through an unpaved road towards the mountains, you’ll arrive to El Prado, the farm of Jaime Casallas where he lives with his wife Olimpa and son Jaime Andrés Jaime comes from a farmer’s family which primarily grew coffee so since a young age his father taught him about other crops bought mainly coffee. It’s been already 55 years, since 1967, where Jaime started his journey in producing his own coffee and has had the help of her wife, Olimpa since then. It was in 2012 where Jaime took the decision of seeking high-quality coffee and making changes in his processes and introducing new varieties. In this endeavor que has had the help of his son Jaime Andres, who now a days is the person in charge of the farm handling the planting of new plants, to processing the coffee and selling it. Since being in specialty coffee the infrastructure of the farm has changed a lot in having a better wet mill and improved drying stations to have a better process and more capacity. They have also been able to make improvements to the house and having better living conditions. At the farm, it is a family endeavor where truly everyone plays a key role to produce that great quality coffee. The goal is to be able to reach a point where 100% of their production is 86 points and above. For this, they have also tried to have new varieties and see how they behave with the agroclimatic conditions of the farm such as Java, Bourbon Sidra and Pacamara.

The way Jaime is processing the coffee, starts with a selection of the ripe cherries which then go through an in-cherry fermentation in the receiving recipient at the wet mill for around 12 hours. Afterwards, the cherries are pulped, and the subsequent coffee beans are fermented in open-air tubs for 24 hours without water and then 24 hours with water that barely covers the coffee mass. Then, the beans are washed just one time, and taken two the covered drying beds where they’re going to reach the ideal point in between 12 to 20 days depending on the climate.